Testing. Testing. A/B/C.

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Throughout the next few months, inewsource will be testing different variations of design on our readers. You may notice some stories look different than others — font size, font type, headlines, layout. Do not be concerned. Do not call for help.

We’re instituting A/B testing, which allows us to present multiple versions of the same story — with slight differences — to segments of our readers. After a few days, we’ll look at our analytics and see if one version of the story is performing significantly better than the other. We’ll then move on to another change, then another, and another, until we have optimized our layout to make each story — and eventually our entire website — easier and more pleasurable to read and navigate.

Please — please — give us feedback. I want to know what you like and what you don’t. What works and what doesn’t. How things look on mobile compared to web or tablet. We need your help to make our stories shine. For starters, please check out Cheryl Clark’s deep dive published this morning, which she sums up as:

“There’s an expression: if you build it, they will come. And it applies not just to Kevin Costner and baseball, but also to hospital beds and San Diego County in particular. And potentially not in a good way. If you build too many, you upset the market, and provide a perverse incentive for doctors to admit too many patients to keep the lights on and stay competitive. There’s precedent. And there’s also a national history of fraud. Does San Diego County have enough patients for its new hospital beds?”